Did you know that email is actually 40 years old? Yet it is only in recent years that companies have realized the power of email marketing and now they are making moves to ensure it is an integral part of their marketing campaigns. It is estimated that over 70% of B2B companies and 65% of B2C companies utilize email marketing at present. While approximately 20% of a company’s average marketing budget was spent on email in 2013, this is expected to rise to 30% in 2014.
The Importance of Email Marketing
According to the ExactTarget 2014 State of Marketing Survey, around 98% of global marketers will be looking to increase or at least maintain their digital spending. Email marketing was deemed to be #3 in terms of importance when it comes to increasing spending with 58% of companies planning to increase their email marketing budget. This is narrowly behind Data & Analytics (61%) and Marketing Automation (60%). Email marketing continues to thrive because of constant innovation and as such, it is necessary for your business to understand the email marketing trends likely to take off in 2014.
- More Content: The volume of marketing emails sent by companies seems to increase each quarter. For example, there was an almost 18% increase in email volume in the second quarter of 2013 when compared to the first quarter according to Smart Insights. As marketing teams become more adept at behavioral targeting, they sense a growing opportunity and more emails being sent is more or less a guarantee.
- Mobile Growth: This is inevitable since there will soon be more people viewing content on smartphones than laptops or desktops. According to an O2 study in the UK, people spend an average of 9 minutes a day checking their email on their mobile devices. There are an estimated 5 billion mobile devices in the world compared to 1 billion PCs. While not all mobiles have Internet access, an increasing percentage have it as standard. It is your duty to alter your email marketing campaign accordingly and this may include changing the size of the font, resizing images and altering the width of the email.
- Integration: Companies are discovering that adding links to their social media profiles takes a matter of moments and can have an incredible impact. A large percentage of marketers seem to believe that adding links to their Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and other accounts will take traffic away from their websites. Yet you can add editorial features and brand messaging to your email marketing campaign and when you use social media to increase the range of your marketing message, the sky really is the limit.
It seems likely that 2014 will be yet another great year for email marketers as it may become one of the best channels for consumers to stay in touch with the brands they love. Naturally, the onus will be on organizations to improve the relevance and quality of their content but if they succeed, their profit margins could soar.